Monday, April 29, 2013

A spiritual check-in at Beltane

At 9:30 tonight, it was not yet fully dark, and the sky was an amazing deep, bright color, somewhere between deep turquoise and indigo.

Where I live, the Sun set today at 7:48 pm. And tomorrow, there will be four more minutes of daylight than there were today.

Tomorrow is May Eve, when some traditions celebrate Beltane; others wait until the following day, May Day itself.

Happy Beltane! Happy May Day!

What is happening in nature where you live right now, this time of
year? What animals, plants, flowers, insects do you see? How is that different
from what was happening in mid-March?

What is the Sun
doing where you live right now? Has its angle in the sky changed since Spring Equinox? How much longer are the days than they
were in mid-March? (For some help with this one, see this nifty set of
tools at the US Naval Observatory: http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/. You don't need to be in the US!)

What do Beltane and May Day mean to you? Are they the same, or different?

Weaving a May Pole is common in many cultural and religious traditions this time of year. What are you weaving into your life now for the next year, over the next year?

3 comments:

Beltane was for us on the Isle of Wight, and the light was just as you've described. (I did take a picture on my Lumia phone, which I've used to illustrate the most recent post on The Mercy Blog.)

The lovely island was all that Spring is, really, carpeted with celandines and daisies and the most luxuriant of dandelions, and filled with more bees that I've seen for a long time on the mainland. A few swallows were doing an early recce, and a gentle black cat patrolled the grounds where we were staying.

It was so good to be away together, and at such a time. The Isle was filled with all that is new, and hope, and beginning. I was reminded of James Nayler's words, near his death: "Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, and to weary out all exaltation and cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary to itself."

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I'm a Quaker and a Witch -- Quaker in the unprogrammed tradition; Witch in the feminist, eclectic tradition of Roses, Too! I write about ministry and Priestessing in its many facets, Quakerism, Paganism, social justice, healing, music, and all sorts of things. Welcome.

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